<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Heisenberg Experiment by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23057515">The Heisenberg Experiment</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter'>JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Breaking Bad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Angst, Found Family, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:54:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>672</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23057515</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I already told you people everything I know, alright?” The kid sounds somewhere between cockily defiant and desperately pleading. <br/>“I know, Jesse. This isn’t about what you have done. It’s about what you’re going to do right now.” Walt sets the file on the table, turning it so Jesse can see the list of charges. Then, he pulls the second sheet out of his pocket and unfolds it. “Because if you help us, all of this…” He gestures to the handcuffs, the cold, grubby table, the concrete walls, “can go away.” <br/>“Help you do what?”<br/>“Take down the new drug kingpin in Albuquerque.”</p><p>AU where Walt is a DEA agent, and Jesse is his inside man...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jesse Pinkman &amp; Walter White, Skyler White/Walter White</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Heisenberg Experiment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_outcast/gifts">just_another_outcast</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>
  <span>Prologue</span>
</h3><p>
  <span>The New Mexico sun seems too bright and cheerful to be spilling across the papers on DEA Agent Walter White’s desk. The light washes out the stark black and white on the papers he hasn’t stopped staring at since they were handed to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Diagnosis: Carcinoma of the left lung. Stage 3A, inoperable. Recommended course of treatment: Chemotherapy.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The paper is more optimistic than the doctor’s words. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He said it was terminal.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Walt always thought a bullet would be the thing to take him down. Maybe a meth lab blowing up in a raid. He never thought it would be cancer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grimaces at the headache forming behind his eyes. The sunlight off the paper is blinding. He knows that some of this is psychosomatic, but some of it is very real. The illness ravaging his body means he has about two years left, or at least that’s Dr. Belknap’s prognosis. It means he has even less time as an active agent. He just hopes it’s enough to finish one last case.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Over the past three months, Albuquerque has been hit with a new strain of meth. The samples his team’s recovered from users and dealers are a pale blue, and the DEA has taken to nicknaming this particular type ‘blue sky’. And Walt and his team are the ones who were tasked with the job of taking down whoever this new kingpin is.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Operation Heisenberg.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Walt shakes his head, he can’t believe they actually went with his name for this plan. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Because it’s so uncertain. There are so many variables.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>And the biggest one is sitting in a file on his desk right in front of him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hank Schrader, his longtime friend and partner, is against it. Walt’s known Hank since both of them first joined the DEA. They’ve done everything together. Climbed the ranks together, dated the Lambert sisters together, were best men at each other’s weddings. Hank is a good cop, and Walt trusts the man’s instincts on cases. But this is the first time since Hank made ASAC that Walt’s pushed him this way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hank sees this job differently than Walt. Maybe it’s more noticeable after the years have gone by, after the world’s ground down the facades they put up and showed the men behind them. Hank is a soldier. He’s out there on the streets fighting a war, seeing the world as a battleground. A war in which there are two sides, the criminals and the cops. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not that Walt doesn’t feel like they’re fighting a battle. But he’s seen all too much of the aftermath. He sees the torn apart families, the kids who might as well be child soldiers. The lines aren’t as distinct as Hank would like to paint them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Walt knows it irks Hank that he went over the man’s head to get approval for this plan. It is a risk. It’s full of things he can’t control. It’s as volatile and likely to blow up in their faces as any meth lab he’s ever busted. But he also thinks this is their best chance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He folds up the doctor’s reports and shoves them underneath a folder open on his desk. A folder detailing the arrest record of one “Jesse Pinkman”, a small-time meth cook and dealer, a local kid gone off the rails after a break with his family, or at least that’s what the papers are saying. Walt had his pick of any of the distributors and cooks the DEA’s brought in in the past five weeks, and it’s a lot. But something about this kid caught him. Maybe it’s the lost look in the eyes in the mug shot staring up at him from the photo clipped to the folder. Walt stands up, taking a moment to steady himself on the edge of his desk as a wave of dizziness flickers through him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Time to go add the biggest variable of all to this equation.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The unknown element that will be the catalyst of this whole operation. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>